How to Recover iPhone Contacts That Lost or Deleted

HELP!! How to recover iPhone contacts?I had my iPhone stolen and now I need to retrieve my contacts without my phone. I had to switch to another phone, since I could not afford to pay for another iPhone and I just need to see the contacts that I had on the iPhone. I synced the iPhone to iTunes constantly on my computer. Is there a way to retrieve the contacts without the iPhone?

An iPhone may store dozens of business and personal contacts on its internal memory. Once the contacts lost, your work and life would be affected more or less. One of the benefits to use iPhone is that iTunes can automatically back up your iPhone contacts and update it every time you sync it. So you really have a big chance to recover contacts from iTunes backup.How to recover contacts on iPhone in steps
Then how to get contacts from the backup file? There is indeed a way, but you need an iPhone contacts recovery tool, and you can have my recommendation here: Wondershare Dr.Fone (for Mac users) or Wondershare Dr.Fone for iOS (for Windows users). Besides recovering contacts from iTunes backup, Wondershare Dr.Fone can help to scan and retrieve contacts directly from iPhone, if you didn’t lose it.

Download the free trial version below to take a try.

Part 1: Scan and extract iTunes backup to recover iPhone contacts (available for all iPhone models)

This iPhone contacts recovery program enables you to recover contacts on iPhone from the backup files on iTunes, no matter you are using iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, iPhone4, or iPhone 3GS, or you just lost it. Wondershare Dr.Fone can help to find the contacts back on your computer. Besides contacts, it also can help to find back your previous SMS, Notes, Calendar, Call History, as well as lost photos and videos, etc.

Step 1:Scan the backup file

No matter you just lost your iPhone or you still hold it in your hand, don’t connect or sync it with iTunesafter you lost your contacts, to prevent the backup file from being updated and replaced by the contacts on your iPhone now.

If you have synced different iDevices with iTunes before, there will be more than one backup files. Choose the one for your iPhone and move further.

Step 2:Recover iPhone contacts

The scan only takes you a few seconds. All the contents from the backup file will be displayed in details. You can read the content right now, no matter from the Contacts, but also from the Messages, Call History, Notes, and you also can preview the photos & videos contained on your iPhone.

To recover the contacts, check the box in front of the Contacts and click the “Recover” button, then you can save the content on your computer. You also can recover the other data, if you have a need.

How iTunes backs up your iPhone contacts

As an iPhone user, who tends to manage the content of iPhone with iTunes, must know that iTunes backs up everything of your iPhone first when you sync with it. This will be the warmest thing when you lost your contacts from iPhone. The bad point is that the backup file is not regular file type, but a SQlitedb file, which is not allowed to preview, even access. Sometimes it’s encrypted, just for private safe.

Part 2: Directly scan and recover contacts from iPhone 5/4S/4/3GS

Step 1:Connect your iPhone to the computer

If you didn’t lose your iPhone, you can also use this way to retrieve your contacts. Connect your iPhone to the computer and run the Wondershare Dr.Fone to your computer, then an interface as follow will appear.

Step 2:Enter the DFU mode and scan iPhone

From the interface above, you need to enter the DFU mode according to the description in 3 steps.

Hold your iPhone and click “Start” button.

Pressing “Power” and “Home” buttons simultaneously for 10 seconds.

After 10 seconds, release “Power” button, but keep holding “Home” for another 10 seconds until you get the message of successfully entering.

After that, the program will automatically begin scanning your iPhone for lost contacts.

Step 3: Preview and recover iPhone contacts

After the scan, you can preview all found data before recovery. Choose “Contacts” to preview, mark it and click “Recover”, you can save all the contents on your computer with one click.

Note: Data found here includes deleted data and those still on your iPhone. If you only want back your deleted ones, you can refine the scan result by using the slide button at bottom to only display deleted items.